This is a audio recast of a blog post from Feb 2008.  It was one of my favorite posts and I wanted to see what it sounded like  in the podcast.  Indulge me.

 

 eating sausage in a fast food nation: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is a podcast of the paper I gave at the Rhetoric Society of America 13th Biennial Conference in Seattle, WA on May 26, 2008.  My paper, “Holding Back the Membership: Breaking Cycles of Despair and Rhetorics of Power in a Contract Negotiations Year,” was part of a panel I was on with Ken Ehrensal, Seth Kahn, and Cheryl Wanko.  Our panel was titled, “Responsible to Whom, for What?: Complex Audiences at Cross-Purposes in Labor Organizing.”  Our panel was focused on the last round of contract negotiations for our union, APSCUF.

If you would like to download full paper with my Works Cited page and cut selections, you can do that here –> Holding Back the Membership (doc)

 

 Holding Back the Membership, RSA 2008 [26:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (9)

Hey all…welcome to another experiment in podcasting. This podcast comes to you from the 5th Annual Kutztown University Composition Conference for Student Writers. Three brave souls, Tim Crane, Katrina Albert, and Renee Franklin agreed to have their panel recorded for this little experiment. (btw…check out our vlogging from KUCC posts on the KU Comp/Rhet blog).

As you may know, I am now the proud owner of a “Snowball” by Blue Microphones. I went for this mic because it every review I read/watched pointed to this USB mic as THE mic to have for professional quality podcasting and digital recording. The big bonus with the Snowball is that is has the capability of 360 degrees recording…so, you can plop it down in the middle of a table, plug it into your laptop, and you’re good to go. And that’s what we did. I’ve gotta say, I’m quite pleased with the quality.

A Little Context:

This panel grew out of my ENG 230 Advanced Composition class this spring.  The first text for the class is Rhetoric: A User’s Guide by John D. Ramage.  Let me just say that the text is not a “user’s guide” in the “how-to” genre.  More of a “user of rhetoric” introducing the uninitiated to rhetoric through the lens of rhetoric.  Students learn in the first couple of pages that Ramage will not tell them what rhetoric “is,” but he will tell them quite abit about what it is like in terms of other things.  He suggests that rhetoric is a Western version of Tao or Dine.  In short, it’s a non-traditional introduction to rhetoric. 

To complicate things that are already complicated, the paper I assign focusing on Ramage is not a traditional paper.  It asks students to write a travel narrative recounting their journey through “Ramageland” (you can check out the paper assignment here).  The papers are generally very creative and quite engaging.  The three papers you will hear here are three such creative and engaging responses to my first assignment.  

I’d love to hear your responses to this podcast…in terms of the quality of the sound, thoughts on the papers, questions about the assignment, ideas about the conference, or…well…you tell me.  I’ll get out of the way now…you can click on the radio (top) or the play button below to hear the podcast.

 

 Journeys with Ramage panel at 2009 KU Composition Conference [47:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (15)

Hey all, I just got this email from the National Coalition for Adjunct and Contingent Faculty:

On April 30th, contingent faculty from all over the country will be teaching their classes outside and holding rallies and press conferences to educate the public and their students about the current working conditions at American universities and colleges. One reason why these faculty members will be holding their classes outside is to draw attention to the fact that most of the people teaching in higher education do not have tenure and have limited academic freedom and job security.  By bringing their classes outdoors, contingent faculty will not only make their labor more visible, but they will also gain a stronger sense of shared working conditions.

Another important motivation for this event is the threat that higher ed administrators will use the current economic downturn to justify the letting go of many non-tenured faculty, and once these teachers are released, we will witness a cutting of courses and an expansion of class size coupled with an increase in tuition and fees.  In other words, parents and students will be paying more and getting less.

While it is clear that some cost cutting will have to be implemented, we have to question why the loss of funds will be taken out on the most vulnerable faculty members and students. Why can’t universities fire administrators or freeze their salaries? Why can’t the wealthy institutions borrow from their billion dollar endowments to weather the storm?

If faculty, students, and staff come out and make their presence known, they may be able to stop the easy administrative solution of just not rehiring the teachers who work outside of the tenure system.  By claiming our status as the new majority in higher education, we can protect the quality of education in American universities and colleges.   Please come out and support faculty, students, and higher education on April 30th.

For more info and a flyer, go to: http://thenewfacultymajority.blogspot.com/

Once again, Jon Stewart draws attention to the failings of “outrage” as a political response…especially the brand of outrage expressed from our politicians.   I’m telling you, I wish the Daily Show would make t-shirts with the “Notorious AIG” image.  

This segment has an added bonus–watch it to the end for Stanley Ragooch.  Talk about better representing the sentiment of most people I know.

Yes, indeed Cooking with Dionysus iTunes podcast is LIVE!  Woo Hoo. 

No, really, I do know that I am just about the only person that is excited about this.  Really, I do.

OK…so, you may have been following my trials and tribulations trying to post my first podcast episode. Well, I think I’ve got the tech part of things worked out.

So, last week I was as CCCCs in San Francisco.  It was a great conference and our panel, Labor Rhetoric and Academic Organizing, went extraordinarily well.  We had a pretty packed room and it was a privilege to be presenting alongside such awesome colleagues: Mary Boland, Seth Kahn, Amy Lynch-Biniek, Rachel Riedner, and Eileen Schell (our respondent).  I was also quite pleased with the vigorous discussion following our papers.  That discussion continued on over to the Serrano Hotel for our CCCCs Labor Caucus Interest Group.  Truly a great way to cap off the day. 

As you may have seen, I decided to use this year’s CCCCs to enter the world of video blogging (vlogging) on our 

composition and rhetoric blog.  That was fun and has got me on a bit of a web 2.0 kick this week (don’t even get me started about Nings).  As I wrote earlier, I’ve got a rather ambitious tech agenda for the fall and I’ve submitted a tech request for some equipment that I hope will come through.  I also found out that I still have a small chuck of money from a Teachnology Grant I received a few years ago for WritersBlogK, a project I undertook with Aaron Barlow.  So, it looks like I’m going to pick up the Snowball after all!

In the meantime, I thought I would take the leap and try my hand at podcasting this week.  After a couple days of failure, I think I’ve finally got the hang of it.  Since I just presented a paper at CCCCs, I thought that would be a good test case.  So, here it is folks: “Rhetoric of Advocacy: Curricular Labor and Democratic Futures.”  In addition to the paper I presented, I also included a bunch of “notes” that were in an earlier draft but had to be cut due to time.

CCCCs Paper: “Rhetoric of Advocacy: Curricular Labor and Democratic Futures.”  Click the radio or the play button to listen.

 

 "Rhetoric of Advocacy: Curricular Labor and Democratic Futures" [24:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (8)

OK, I think I’ve got this now…looks like I messed up first file somehow. Here we go:

 

 Rhetoric of Advocacy: Curricular Labor and Democratic Futures [24:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (8)

OK…this is an experiment in podcasting. Ideally there will be an audio link to my CCCCs 2009 paper in this post. PodPress and I have been having…shall we say…differences of opinion as to whether or not my files are accessible. We’ll see if I’ve got the kinks worked out.

CCCC’s 2009 Paper: “Rhetoric of Advocacy: Curricular Labor and Democratic Futures.”